Gajar Methi Sabzi

I was having a fairly uneventful week. When this gem appeared on the evening news.

Turns out a passenger aboard a Virgin Mumbai to London flight wrote an impassioned complaint to Sir Richard Branson himself about the Indian food he was served.

The excruciatingly hilarious letter went global in no time. Prompting the maverick entrepreneur to personally apologise and invite the disgruntled one to test food at Virgin’s catering house.

Can I come along too?

For years, I have suffered partly-heated yellow gloop parading as curry on flights back to London from India. The desserts taste worryingly like their plastic packaging. Salads are either freezing cold or brown edged. The dry bread roll devoured with lime pickle would easily qualify as the highlight of the mile-high culinary experience.

No wonder families resort to clicking open tupperware tiffin boxes of parathas and dry palyas and sabzis. Give them cutlery and dinnerware while they’re at it, I say!

Revenge is a dish best served cold. Now we have a vocal champion for our cause. Who didn’t stomach the insult sitting down. May this be a lesson to other airlines. In an age of internet connectivity, food awareness and high consumerism, even the smallest gripes could become a stick to beat your brand with.

Digest this with my bitter sweet offering of Gajar Methi, a North Indian winter favourite of sauteed carrots and fresh fenugreek leaves.

Feeds 4:

4 large carrots

250gm fresh fenugreek leaves

1 tsp cumin seeds

Half tsp chilli powder

Half tsp turmeric powder

1 tsp oil

Salt to taste

Peel and slice the raw carrots into hald centimetre discs. Wash and chop roughly the bunches of fenugreek discarding the hard stalks towards the ends.

In a large frying pan, bring the oil to heat over a high flame. When it’s hot, add in the cumin seeds and as they splutter, chuck in the carrots and the spices. Saute for about five minutes until you can see the carrots softening, then mix in the leaves. Lower the hat to a medium, cover and cook for another five to 10 minutes untilt he leaves wlt and the carrots just fallt apart when probed with a fork.

Add salt to taste and enjoy with a paratha. Preferably in the comfort of your own home.

17 responses to “Gajar Methi Sabzi”

But Mallika (copied from the same letter), Paul Charles, Virginâ€™s Director of Corporate Communications seems to think that food was â€œaward-winning food which is very popular on our Indian routes.â€ I sincerely hope not.

And what is with the Indian Vegeterian and Asian Vegeterian choices they offer. I picked one of those by mistake on a trip and for breakfast we got a dry bun with equally dry I think what was supposedly roasted egg plant and a piece of tomato. I stopped “special order” soon after.

This dish is totally new to me. Carrots with methi, go to try it some time.

Hey Mallika, I love gajar methi, the kids hate their veggies, & we all totally dislike airline food, Virgin or BA. Oily, tasteless & total gloop. What drama when the ‘valuable’ customer complains, & Branson & Willie Walsh run in different directions trying to say they never knew. Of course they know. But the point is, Indian food picked up from Delhi/India is much better than what comes in from the rest of the world. I’ve been to the flight kitchens a number of times, many years ago, & they used to do a brilliant job ex Delhi.

he he he… Seemed like all the news channels were after that news 🙂 everytime before we board the flight we have hearty bf/dinner at airport cafe’s (and now Bengaluru internation airport has quite swanky places) so that we don’t have to undergo the torture of eating the food served in flights. and we also carry few fruits and chocolate bars. anything to avoid flight food 😉
and coming to ur recipe of carrot and methi, very unsual combination but i can almost see myself loving it 😀

Thank you for the wonderful recipe…I was looking for quick curry last night and I ran into your blog. Simple and delicious. I had to make small changes…I shredded the carrots because I do not like the taste of whole carrot and used kasuri methi soaked as I did not have fresh one… Even my two year old daughter liked it 🙂